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Fearing for her safety following harassment by security forces, writer joins husband into exile

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(Mizzima/IFEX) - Popular Burmese writer Hnin Pan Ein and her son fled to Thailand on 14 November 2008 to join her husband, a former political prisoner, after being frequently intimidated and harassed by Burmese authorities.

Police and military agents reportedly kept watch and intimidated Hnin Pan Ein and her 14-year-old son after her husband, Nay Oo, the South Dagon Township National League for Democracy (NLD) Youth Organizer and a former political prisoner, fled to Thailand in October. Harassed, the family decided to join him in exile.

"I initially decided to stay inside Burma for as long as I could, even after my husband had gone into exile. But when they [the authorities] hinted that they would arrest and interrogate us, I realised that we could no longer stay inside Burma. I had to take into consideration the security of my son," Hnin Pan Ein told Mizzima.

"Military Affairs Security (MAS) and Police Special Branch (SB) personnel frequently visited my home to inquire about my husband. We were scared by the frequent knocks on the door," she added. MAS and SB serve as the intelligence groups of the military and the police, respectively.

She said that her husband fled across the Thai-Burma border last month after several of his close friends and colleagues had been arrested.

He was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment on 19 February 1989 for various crimes, including the distribution of illegal documents.

Hnin Pan Ein has written many travelogues, essays, articles and stories based on her experiences visiting her husband in Kalemyo prison in Sagaing Division. The articles appeared in several monthly magazines, such as "Nweni and Mahaythi".

Even after her husband was released on 6 July 2005 she continued writing on the same theme, based on others' experiences in visiting their beloved ones languishing in remote prisons under harsh environments.

Many of her 200 short stories and articles were censored either in whole or in part by the censor board.

Hnin Pan Ein started her writing career in 2000. Her travelogue, "Tamarpan and Bawalan", was very popular. She was given the My Best Like award, given by a literary fan living in Japan, for her article "Gratitude of the Environment and a Star".

She also received the Tawphayarlay Prize for her "Modern Memory and Collected Short Stories" as well as the Naymin Ahman literary group's Best Short Story Award for "Lotus Beside a Spring".

"I will continue writing about the situations all of us (Burmese) are living in and the evil political situation inside Burma," she said.

Restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression and assembly persist, amid the government's failure to contend with the range of rights-abusing laws that have been long used to criminalize free speech and prosecute dissidents.As part of the military's "clearance operations" in northern Rakhine State, where thousands of Rohingya Muslims face rampant and systemic human rights violations, the authorities denied independent journalists access to the region since early October.

An officer of the Myanmar army recently filed a criminal complaint against two journalists for allegedly sowing disunity among the military. Even though mediation by the Press Council caused the military to withdraw the case, this incident demonstrates how the military continues to throw its weight to get back at what it perceives as negative publicity.

The Broadcasting Law, approved in August, enabled private companies to enter the broadcast market for the first time. However, it maintains presidential control over the broadcasting sector, and the Broadcasting Council it established is susceptible to political interference.

The report surveys the rocky landscape for media and public discourse since the ruling military junta lifted the curtain on the southeast Asian nation in 2012 after five decades of isolation from the modern world.

As the election looms for later this year, incidents in 2014 and in early 2015 involving the press raises serious questions on the genuineness of media freedom in Burma. The situation is alarming as the state seems to have heaped all the faults and fines on the media in the past year, which has seen a media worker being killed in October on the pretext of national security. International assistance has poured into the country to develop the media aimed at lifting and sustaining the state of media freedom. However, a viable press freedom environment seems unlikely to materialise in Burma before the end of this administration.

There is some skepticism about how much influence Burma's youth movement can assert in terms of political change. Still, activists have benefited from greater access to the Internet, which has brought a new side to the online community after decades of heavy censorship

Burma is at a crossroads. The period of transition since 2010 has opened up the space for freedom of expression to an extent unpredicted by even the most optimistic in the country. Yet this space is highly contingent on a number of volatile factors.

The media landscape in Burma is more open than ever, as President Thein Sein releases imprisoned journalists and abolishes the former censorship regime. But many threats and obstacles to truly unfettered reporting remain, including restrictive laws held over from the previous military regime. The wider government’s commitment to a more open reporting environment is in doubt.

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